Higher Career Cost Can Actually Explain Why More Women Than Men Go to College

Hanzhe Zhang ()

No 2017-064, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: This paper shows how women's relatively higher career cost can explain why in most of the developed countries women go to college at a higher rate than men and earn less on average. I assume men and women make costly college and career investments but women face an extra cost for career investment because such investment occurs during their fertile period. The extra career cost discourages women from investing in career but surprisingly encourages more women than men to go to college through a general-equilibrium marriage-market channel that results in an endogenously higher college marriage premium for women.

Keywords: gender-differential career cost; college gender gap; college marriage premium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 D10 I20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-gen
Note: ECI
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http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Zhang_ ... cost_women-v-men.pdf First version, August 2017 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: An Investment-and-Marriage Model with Differential Fecundity: On the College Gender Gap (2021)
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